Friday, July 04, 2008

On Headspace and the Tectonics of Views

"Sometimes all that is needed is a little bit of magic. It doesn't need much talent, developed skills nor a genius view... only presence and waiting ...serendipity.

On the other hand it is possible to witness this magic occurring over and over again - it exists and it can be found as a real trouvé - yet it is in no sense the result of chance and portion but rather the outcome of one of internet's most fruitful and skilled collaborations; the titans of voodling with sound."

.

A short experimental mirror-voodle by bk featuring an extension of earlier presented footage juxtaposed as it is. View the deep and sound space perturbed only by a placing - or by being placed - in nearness or contiguity. Even though Juxtaposition might be a very unsafe criterion of continuity... don't be afraid, gurdonark's sound meditation, alt. mediation, provides us with plenty of headspace, clear tectonic views and - although many voices - one mass. Looking for contiguity, perturbative spaces, moving mass and the sorts; what more can you ask for, b.k.?! Gurdonark's really sound collocation 'one mass, many voices' and many many of his other nice appositions and tuned tessellations can be found at ccmixetr.org.

10 comments:

A group of French people recite a nonsense poem. A Dutch journalist reports on the advocacy by two artists of a "sharing economy". A young American woman recites a poem about "pneuma--the wind". All three mediate among one another, seeking to achieve together a meditation of sorts, a gestalt strikingly different from the disparate parts. The impact of the concept is only realized if one can speak French, Dutch and English (I speak only English)--and yet the idea of multiplicity remains, even if one speaks none of the above.

A continuity of imagery re-defines the inferences one may draw from melody and disparate words. The viewer/listener brings completely different associations to the work when one confronts the mirror imagery. To explore the continuity, one realizes tha there is a blending of very different images and sounds--and yet, through the magic of framed perspective on a blip.tv screen, somehow the net result is a unity,a continuity.

I wonder if voodling with sound is a story about the titans, and that further, more refined pantheons of technique someday will displace the notion of voodlng with sound. I think not--a purely lumiere voodle would lose the headspace which the sound provides.

I enjoy creating video for songs, and songs for video. The most fun kind of songs for video are the ones in which the image is only incidentally an inspiration for the song, as here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5xX97RL3fI

Yet sometimes I find myself creating videos for music which are very literal:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEa7RmBC_Hk

My own music is intended to be background (ambient), and it is always fun to see what narratives people create for songs which are not "narrative" in orientation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evQs_4nRLM0

It is also fun to create films for songs which are not themselves particularly "narrative"--there is such a freedom in that:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUUxSKHoP-8

Yet for all these different approaches, I must admit that the voodles are among my favorites because the voodle invites the audience to engage with the material in a different way, in a way that presupposes there is something more/other to the encounter than traditional wisdom would say "meets the eye".

The voodle is a meditation, but a mediation without clear definitions or sources. The voodle is a mediation, between the left and right side of the brain, perhaps.

An earlier time in our western culture saw a sharp divide between "structured" narrative, such as this video of my own song interpreting a Canadian fellow's poem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prWUaEvIdT0

and "abstract" video, such as this animation interpretation of my own song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJF8kdrrVG8

Yet I fancy that when we view film "ambiently", without the agendae of artistic "school" or pre-determined dogma, we tend to see a voodle/film/song less as a right way or wrong way, than as an approach. When we seek the continuity of human expression at the expense of the formerly easy conclusions we drew from an idee' fixe of what film "must be".

The theologian Bonhoeffer spoke of "cheap grace", that grace we confer upon ourselves, in lieu of the difficult discipline of authentic experience of that which transcends. We who watch voodles and make ambient music have less lofty goals, perhaps--but we live aware that "new eyes and new ears" is not so much a self-congratulation on our own artistic "skill", but a realization that there is more to see, more to hear, and we must find a new continuity if we are to truly see and hear it.

Thank you for allowing my song to accompany this particular journey of sound and vision. I enjoyed your video very much.

The voice in this work is also used by me for my weekly KlankBeeld:http://www.marcoraaphorst.nl/2008/01/11/klankbeeld-raaphorst-ik-kan-loggen-waar-ik-wil/

The voice is Bert Kommerij,a Dutch radiomaker who is very active in creating radiodrama and documentairy video's. He's a collegue of mine. We've been working together on Flick Radio (www.flickradio.nl) and Media Me (www.mediame.nl). Both video's under Creative Commons for Dutch Public Broadcast. We love CC and remixing.

Gurdonark! We had great fun to follow your links! and on that path we discovered many more of your auditory envelopings but also some engaging and engaged poems, views, insights and nevertheless a great amount of friendly motivation!

Marco Raaphorst - Thanks for the comment!I think I have heard some of your guitar pieces on ccmixter.org... can that be? I even think I've downloaded some on my external hardisk for later-voodle applications... Anyway, I will check it out again and follow the links on your comment.

I speak German, Norwegian and English. My french is about to dissolve into thin air... but it wouldn't have helped me with the dutch language either. Nevertheless, it's possible for me to make out some sort of understanding on what Bert Kommerij's voiceover is about... It was great fun to discover Gurdonark's piece for this voodle.

Say hello to your friend and tell him to watch 'On Headspace and the Tectonics of Views'! We will certainly try to grab some of the outcomes of your diverse projects and collaborations.

Thank you for your reply--and apologies for leaving quite so many links!

I'll bet it would be great fun to rent a cabin in Scandinavia in August--when the weather would be delightfully cool as compared to here.

Marco Raaphorst releases a lot of great music under Creative Commons licenses. His "klankbeeld" series, which is at www.marcoraaphorst.nl, is absolutely great. He finds picture he admires (a "beeld") and writes the sounds ("Klank") to go with the picture. He's posted dozens for free downloading, and they are all wonderful work.

No apologies needed :) we really enjoyed the ride! and we will continue to visit your various journals, blogspots and web-outings!

I must also do further investigations on Marco - looks like I've been sleeping online...

Renting a cabin in Scandinavia in August is great - and definitely cooler then in your spots... and far more expensive I guess... The Norwegians i.e. pay their shorts off to spend their annual week close to nature. Close to nature means that they pay a lot for an utmost primitive cabin... but it's fun, I have to admit it. Ask Sam when he's back, he will experience the luxury of primitive housings for the first time now.

The exchange rates are so favorable right now that I'm sure that any rental for even a very expensive cabin here would not seem very much in your currency. I just made reservations for a cabin in the Oklahoma mountains for a four-day weekend. It's not primitive at all--satellite TV, full facilities, on a picturesque river in the amazing (and almost unknown) Kiamchi mountains. The cost was 672 dollars,which is rather expensive here, but in your currency but about the cost of a Danish bicycle (and perhaps a Norwegian one as well). Here a very primitive cabin might be 35 dollars a night.

The key would be to visit before the annual Norwegian vacation, but after it was warm enough to enjoy....so many places I'd like to visit. My wife and I have never been to Norway.

In addition to being a cool musician and an advocate for Creatve Commons sharing, Marco is a music software genius who writes patches to work with the Digital Audio Workstation Reason. He's a bright and creative fellow!

Y'all might enjoy the mediame flickr group, which Bert Kommerij (the voice in the video in Dutch) organized. It's about pictures and ideas about how all this technological media advances changes our lives.

About us

‘LOMEG_ROM : voodles on CONTIGUITY’ is an experimental workspace/playground for investigations in the morphology of body and space. The Law of Contiguity (Edwin R. Guthrie, 1886-1959): ‘When two ideas or psychologically perceived events have once occurred in close association, they are likely to occur in close association again, the subsequent occurrence of one tending to elicit the other’, is the inspiration for LOMEG_ROM’s unpretentious visual outbursts or simple video registrations.
LOMEG_ROM is a collaboration between ‘moi’ (the female) and ‘b.k.’ (the male) – both filmmakers and architects sharing the same enthusiasm and interest for perturbative spaces and moving mass, ...or what else life brings on.
Click the images to watch the videos with Quicktime or follow the link to visit the LOMEG_ROM archive on blib.tv. Attention PC-users: for a better viewing experience either use the Apple Safari platform or watch the videos directly streamed by clicking on the blip.tv link under each of the posts.

The VOODLE term was coined under a daydream workshop in Copenhagen, Denmark, 23. – 25. February 2007. Read here the first description of the voodle – watch here, here, here and here the first ever made voodles - and search here and here for more voodle-theory and voodle-ontology.